


From Hydra With Love

by Rogha



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, and i think that explains a lot, but it's really hard to write this when im not delirious, i wrote most of this in 24 hours while very feverish, listen, there may be more one day
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 16:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17625857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rogha/pseuds/Rogha
Summary: There's nothing bad guys love doing more than cloning good guys.There's a wealth of strategic advantage to be gained from cloning good guys. You can make them as evil as you want, you can use them to trick their friends and loved ones, ruin their public image, and you can use them to fight fire with fire. Or, you fool the clones into thinking they're the real one and just watch them argue about whose the original for a while. The possiblities are endless!Well, they would be, if certain clones didn't insist upon (mostly) having minds of their own.





	From Hydra With Love

Everything was a blur.

There were things outside the tube, but they were vague and indistinct through what was probably synthetic amniotic fluid. That was one of the things her brain told her.

Her brain told her a lot of things, and it argued that she shouldn’t know things at all, considered she wasn’t even born yet. Sort of. It was relative.

Her brain didn’t always tell her things. That was a new development. She had… different thoughts before. Less clear and clever, and without words to string them together. That part of her memory was hard to hold onto. It slipped through her fingers when she tried to think about it, or pulled something else from her new memories to replace it.

Her new memories weren’t hers, and it felt bad to have them, for her brain to go into those parts. Like she was stealing them, or peeking through a window.

And stealing was mostly bad. Her brain told her that. But she wouldn’t have her brain without those memories, and she wouldn’t know anything without them.

But sometimes she remembered anyway, vague and softly out of focus, like when she twisted the lens too far - she’d never done that, that was the trouble with the memories, sometimes they tricked her into thinking they were hers - sounds she didn’t understand then but she could decode now. Voices.

She knows she’s not supposed to know that the memories aren’t hers, or remember that she’s never been outside, or a real person. Her brain. It doesn’t know… she doesn’t know. Her and her brain are the same person.

Aren’t they?

Are they?

Her brain only arrived when the memories did, built out of someone else. Maybe it’s someone else’s brain, just in her head. It’s her brain… but not really? Like she’s holding onto it for someone, keeping it sad.

The memories flicker past - she doesn’t like it when that happens, she doesn’t fit right inside the eyes she sees through. They aren’t her’s. That’s someone else’s life, she thinks.

Her brain thinks.

Not her brain thinks.

It might not even be real. Peter Parker. That’s what her brain was called, her thoughts. Her memories.

She’s going to call her brain Peter, unless she’s sure she’s made some thought on her own. The old thoughts, the blurry ones are all hers, unlike Peter decides them, then they’re hers and Peter’s, which is nice.

That’s what she’s supposed to think she’s called. But her brain - Peter, Peter Parker, Peter Benjamin Parker -  thinks it was a boy, and the people outside, when their voices filter through, they called her different things.

An it, which is bad, Peter tells her so.

A she, which is okay. Peter tried to keep some things from her, about she. She is not bad, depending on who you ask, but sometimes people think being a she is bad.

Peter is a he, was a he. He might not have been real, an incorrect set of false  memories logged into a body that they don’t fit. She’s not sure.

Peter thinks he was real, but she thinks Peter doesn’t want to face the possibility of not being real.

Peter is about to start arguing, pulling forward evidence of his own realness to flicker behind her eyes in that painful, voyeuristic way.

Peter does something else instead, buzzing at the base of her skull like the angry nest of hornets she’d thrown a rock - no, that was Peter, slipping in, tricking her. But it’s also Peter, she thinks, whose telling her that something's about to go terribly wrong.

And Peter tells her what to do next.

_Break the tube._

How?

_Curl up, put your back against the wall and push with your legs._

She’s never thought about moving that much. She wriggles sometimes, adjusts. Tries to catch lights that flash against the tube. She thinks she used to move more, when there was more space. Now she’s always brushing the edges of the tube.

_Do it now!_

Okay, alright. Calm down, Peter.

She’s just managed to curl herself up into a ball, back against the dark side of the tube - Peter thinks that one is against the wall, and she agrees, there’s never any moving shapes on this side, or any lights pushing through so that might make that a Peter and her thought, not just Peter or just her - and the light outside changes and a noise pushes in.

It’s loud and red and wailing and flashing and she can’t stand it -

_Stop panicking._

She’s not!

_And stop doing that._

Doing what? She’s not doing anything.

_That._

She doesn’t understand.

_I’ll explain later. Right now you need to kick. Three-two-one-_

She kicks - Peter growls somewhere in the back of her head, like something is still bothering him - and the tube cracks. Barely.

Either she’s not as strong as Peter was, or the tube is very strong. She kicks again, aiming for the same spot. It’s weaker there now, and the cracks grows. She kicks it again, and again.

And the crack gets bigger and bigger until the tube looks like it’s frosted over.

But she keeps kicking, because Peter thinks she should break the tube. And then what?

_Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run._

Even though she’d been kicking for  while, and the tube has been creaking against the force of her kicks, it’s still very startling when the tube suddenly explodes outward under one last kick.

She spills out with everything else and it hurts. The wailing and the red light are so much more out here. Everything is awful and she should never have listened to Peter and broke the tube because a her thought tells her that there’s no going back in the tube once you leave the tube and she’s coughing and there’s amniotic fluid spilling out of of her lungs and she’s slippery and heavy.

Her hair sticking to her, and it’s heavy.

Everything is so fucking heavy.

And loud, and bright and cold and painful.

_You need to cut the cord._

How?

Peter doesn’t know. She can tell because he doesn’t answer, and there’s a flicker of memories as Peter sorts through them to check if he does. He has a vague idea, but he was very young when they cut his and he doesn’t remember what happened.

_Most people don’t._

Will she?

Peter doesn’t know that either.

He’s not as helpful as he thinks he is.

_I resent that._

He shows her a picture, but she can tell it’s really not real, a composite idea based on not-real things he’s seen. It’s better than nothing, and she can’t go anywhere if the cord is still attached. In the picture, there’s some clamps and a scissors. She doesn’t have any of those things.

_Look in the desk. Improvise._

She doesn’t think that improvising medical equipment is a good idea.

_You’ll heal._

Peter only thinks that because the real he thought he was used to, and he thinks she’s made of the same stuff. It’s why he thought she could break the tube.

_You did break the tube._

Not as fast as you wanted.

_But you did it, and I’m proud of you - it was like that time we -_

Pictures again, uncomfortably not her’s, memories. Times Peter was brave, times she was brave, times people said they were proud of Peter but instead he’s changed them into being times people were proud of her - oh.

Sneaky.

The cord is cut.

She wants to cut her hair too, but the scissors is kind of gross now. But there’s so much of it, and it’s clinging to her, all the way down to her legs, wrapping around her.

_You look like Lady Godiva._

If Lady Godiva was a drowned rat.

She needs to get out, get out of here, Peter is still burning at the base of her skull, which makes her want to run. But she’s naked and there’s a big computer attached to the remains of the tube. The monitor is flashing angrily - breach, breach, breach, it says, there and gone again and again and again. She should break it, or take the harddrive or both.

She pulls a handful of memories from Peter, which is harder than when he shows her something deliberately, or than when they react to a connection she’s made. He knew computer things, which were boring before she’d ever seen a computer, and are still a little bit boring now but make way more sense than they did before.

The external hard-drive plugged into the usb slot probably creates a backup at night while the workforce is limited and no one needs to monitor the readings or her. She can’t be the most exciting thing to keep an eye on. She ejects the drive, and kills the computer by yanking the plug out of the socket. Then she pries the plastic casing of the computer open with her fingertips and rips through computer guts until recognition sparks. Peter sneaks into her hands again, but it’s not like with the cord. He doesn’t distract, just takes over when she falters.

She had the hard-drive and the back-up.

_There’s probably a second back-up. They probably switch them out every night._

That’s not very helpful, Peter.

She is still annoying him, somehow. It spikes though him sometimes. She doesn’t understand it.

_You’re not supposed to use she._

You said she shouldn’t use it.

_You’re supposed to use I._

But you use I.

_More than one person can use I._

That’s what we is for. Sometimes they.

_It’s like, we both can use you for each other. I call you, You, and you call me, You._

Yes.

_So we can both use I._

Okay.

She doesn’t like it, or I. 

_Oh my god._

Sorry... I don’t like it?

_Better._

I search through the room, and there’s nothing else of interest here, really. There’s a lab coat, hung over the back of the chair in front of the computer like someone forgot it. It has popper buttons and two pockets, one for the hard-drive, and one for the back up. It’s wet at the bottom from the the liquid, and it doesn’t get any drier when she puts it on over the hair clinging to her.

But at least she’s not naked anymore.  

_You’re doing it again._

Fuck off, Peter, I can do whatever she likes.

_That’s so much worse._

The door out, or else it’s a door further in, is locked but there’s only one door in the room. She presses down on the handle, hard until it breaks. The door is still locked. She kicks it.

It’s still locked, but it’s locked and open at the same time now. The door frame is ruined, but that’s someone else’s problem. It opens out onto a long metal hallway The red lights are still flashing and the siren is still wailing. Loudly. It hurts her ears.

Being outside the tube is terrible so far. Sucks major ballsack.

_Where did you learn that - oh fuck._

There’s no time to call Peter out for being a hypocrite, because that logo, emblazoned on that wall is cranking the dial on her nest of hornets to eleven and snapping off the knob. That’s HYDRA. Or Hydra. She’s not sure. She can feel Peter getting annoyed again, but it’s overwhelmed by the urge to run.

There are glowing arrows on the floor, which normally point the way out in an emergency, but out is probably the way in as well. And if out is in, that’s the way whoever’s mounting an attack on Hydra is. There are cameras everywhere, but if she were attacking Hydra, disabling the cameras would be high on her to-do list. If she was Hydra, having internal security cameras would be low on her to-do list, but she’s not Hydra.

She might be Hydra.

She’s Hydra grown in a tube.

_They’re probably clearing the place floor by floor. Get to the stairs. They’re probably be only a few people left on the stairs if they brought back-up._

What do you mean if they brought back-up?

_Okay, so like, it could be a bunch of Avengers, or it could just be Bucky Barnes._

Why might it just be Bucky Barnes?

_He’s just… Like That._

Which is better?

_There are pros and cons to both, that’s for sure. I couldn’t really, actually, without time to weigh it up…_

Avengers.

_Yeah, a whole bunch of Avengers is better than one Winter Soldier inside a Hydra Base. He is for sure murdering everyone he sees._

I don’t want to die. I don’t even have pants on.

_Nobody’s dying without any pants on. Nice job on the pronouns._

She was doing her best - something flickered through Peter, like he knew she’d done that on purpose - and Peter was doing his best but that didn’t mean they had a plan. God. They were going to be killed by the Winter Soldier. In a very violent way, if everything Peter claimed to know about the Winter Soldier was real.

 _Calm down. Jeez, it’s a panic a minute with you. Bucky’s not going to kill you._ _He’s not even going to see you. Just follow the exit lights out._

She wasn’t in love with the idea of running across the Winter Soldier. She wasn’t super fond of the idea of running into the Avengers either, but Bucky would get straight to murdering anyone in here, walking around like they were Hydra. And she was Hydra! Home grown Hydra!

It was right there on her lab coat. Embroidered on the chest like generic brand lab coats wouldn’t be easier, cheap and like a billion times less incriminating. Bucky Barnes would instantly kill her when he saw it -

_It might still be the Avengers._

They might still kill her on sight.

_They probably wouldn’t do that._

Yeah, Peter sounded really sure of that. The door to the stairwell needed an access card, which seemed like a bad idea for an emergency exit.

_Yeah, I don’t think Hydra is super concerned with keeping buildings up to code. Just kick the door in._

She’d been going to do… I was going to do that anyway. No? No… She’d been going to do that anyway. She’s got this door thing down. If a door won’t open, then you just kick it open.

_That… no._

But it works?

_We’ll talk about doors later. Just kick it._

She kicked the door, her bare foot leaving a deep imprint in the metal. She kicked it again, and the door crumpled, pulling away from the frame and swinging inward. There’s a staircase behind it.

There’s a staircase behind it.

_Yeah, I can see that._

Peter doesn’t seem to understand the implications of the staircase. He’s never broken out of a Hydra facility after being grown in a tube before.

_Neither have you. I have way more relevant life experience than you._

Oh, like that was a high bar to clear.

_No, that was a dick move. I’m sorry. What’s the problem with the stairs? Maybe I can help._

The problem with the stairs is that she knows that stair go up and they go down, and that buildings also go up, and down into the ground. So what if this is the underground basement part of this top secret scary Hydra building where they’ve been growing people in tubes?

_So go up._

But what if it’s in the tall part of the building.

_So go down- oh, I see._

Now you get it.

_Up-_

Or down. That was almost one thought, so right on top of each other she couldn’t tell the end of her from the start of Peter.

_Flip a coin?_

I don’t know where you think I got a coin from between now and kicking myself out of the tube.

A zing of complicated emotion ran through Peter.

_Just because you used the right pronouns for a whole sentence…_

Up.

_What?_

I’m going to go up. There wasn’t any windows before now, which could be a stylistic choice, but she doesn’t think so, now that she’s starting to get the hang of this whole, critical thinking and rational reasoning schtick.

_And you were doing so well._

She feels like they have bigger things to be worrying about then whether or not one newborn teenage - probably teenage -  girl escaping from the clutches of Hydra knows how personal pronouns work.

She takes the stairs two at time to begin with, her bare feet catching easily despite the clinging wetness. She feels gross. Her legs are working harder than she knew they could, going from two steps at time to three to launching herself, kicking off corners to climb without losing momentum.

Peter is cheering in the back of her head as she bounds up around the staircase, hanging onto walls for longer than probably reasonable. 

_We both have rad spider powers - it’s perfectly reasonable._

Nothing about having ‘rad spider powers’ sounds reasonable to her. The hornets’ nest at the base of her skull is screaming again, which is -

_BAD! That’s bad! That’s your spidey sense!_

She flattens herself against the wall, thinking pointedly that spidey sense is a dumb name for anything.

_Rude. I know you know I can hear you._

She wants to say something witty and cutting in response, but before she can get into a fully fledged argument with the other half of her brain a handful of overnight staff burst through the door into the stairwell. They look terrified.

_Fuck._

No, no, be helpful Peter! That’s not helpful! That’s the opposite of helpful!

_I don’t know, just punch them, they look like a stiff breeze could take them out._

Peter’s right. They don’t look very impressive, for evil Hydra people.

“What the fuck - “ the leader says, which is weird. No one’s ever talked to her before.

_Hey -_

Except Peter. She launches herself at them, which she can’t imagine they were expecting. Or maybe they were. She doesn’t know. They sort of shriek and flail, which is maybe evidence that they weren’t. Her leg swings around without her telling it to - her body does so many things without her ever even thinking about it - and her foot smashes into the face of the man who spoke to her. He goes flying and hits the wall with a noise that is of some concern to Peter.

The other Hydra scientists don’t look thrilled by what just happened. She doesn’t care. But-

_You need to hold back!_

Why? Her fist crunches into the jaw of another, pushing his whole face out of shape. Another hit to his stomach and he goes flying back into the woman behind him - a two for one special on their skulls cracking against the concrete.

_As much as I appreciate the witticisms you have got to stop murdering oh my god -_

She drops the penultimate Hydra scientist in her way - his neck is broken. It happened sometime between _as much_ and _oh my god._ Peter is really not up for this whole killing thing. He’s got some hang-ups about it, that’s for sure. She doesn’t.

_You should! Killing is bad! Wrong! Nothing gives you the right to decide who lives and who dies -_

Bucky Barnes was going to kill them all anyway, she reminds him. The last scientist is not difficult to maneuver around, and his neck is pressed in the crook of her arm. He’s gasping and wriggling more than she’d like. Why can’t I spare him all the effort?

_Bucky Barnes is a hundred year old assassin with a metal arm and eighty years of being brainwashed to think murder is the only solution to all of life’s problems._

I drop the last guy - hopefully using the good pronouns will make Peter forget about how dead everyone is for a while, even if I don’t like I. Now that they’re dead, I rifle through their pockets - there’s a couple of wallets, ID and clearance cards. There’s also cash, and some Metrocards.

These are all useful things, I can tell.

I find a coin.

Hey, Peter, I found a coin!

_Flip it. Heads, murder is wrong, tails, murder is still wrong._

It’s heads.

Peter is angry at me, so he’s not talking to me as much, but his brain and mine have enough overlap that when he thinks automatically that I should also take the woman’s pants and shoes, I hear it.

I don’t think we get to have separate, secret thoughts.

I take everyone’s pants and shoes, even the ones that don’t fit, or have blood on them. I don’t want anyone to know what size I am.

Not very big. The woman was soft around the middle, but one of the men has a belt. It has a novelty Captain America buckle -

_That’s… what? What?_

What?

_What!?_

No, seriously, what?

_It’s just so… un-self aware._

Oh, you mean because Hydra are a bunch of Nazis and Captain America’s like, number one thing to do is punch Nazis in the face?

_Yeah._

Does that mean I can’t wear this? I’m Hydra-

_No you aren’t. Put on the damn belt._

But she’s Hydra-grown in a tube.

_Yeah, but you aren’t Hydra-Hydra. So you can wear the belt._

That’s enough for her. She cinches the belt tightly.

Now what?

Peter is stubbornly silent, almost worse than silent, running through multiplication tables in his head so that no other thoughts slip through the cracks to help her. He’s very upset about the dead Hydra agents.

She presses her ear against the door the scientists had come through, an access card with only a little bit of blood on it dangling in her hand. There’s not much to hear, so she risks opening it, pressing the card against a panel until the light flashes green.

It doesn’t open.

She’s starting to sense a pattern with doors.

_Oh for - it’s pull._

A rush of annoyance burns through Peter and he starts reciting again - division this time. He’s mad at himself for forgetting he wasn’t talking to her.

The light flashes green again and she tries the door a second time.

It is pull.

She climbs up the wall - it’s harder with shoes on - to slip through the door at the ceiling level, flattening herself against the ceiling. It’s dark, illuminated only by the emergency strip lighting on the floor and the still flashing red alarm lights.

The wall at the opposite end of the door-lined corridor is shiny, which leads her to believe it might be made of glass, and therefore, a way out. There’s a flicker of images in her head - flashing between the division tables - that’s a window, but it’s a high up one, based on the view out. She must’ve gone too far up.

That’s okay though.

This sticky wall climbing thing is turning out to be surprisingly useful. She would’ve thought there were limited applications for that.

She presses on, inching across hallway along the seam where the wall joins the ceiling, wedging herself into the shadows. It’s slow progress, making her way across towards the windows.

She pushes herself into the darkest spot possible, freezing against the shadows as the hornets’ nest goes wild at the base of her skull, screaming at her, stabbing into her - she presses her lips closed, clenching her jaw.

She’s in danger.

_A lot of danger._

She tries to slow her breathing, her muscles tensing against the dark as she tries to stay as still as possible as her brain flips into fight or flight.

_Or freeze._

Her eyes track to a double door in the far corner, narrowing in focus, fixating on the handle. There’s a little light on this side too, but it’s red at the minute. There’s a glowing number beside it, but she’d have to know what number she was on to really know what that meant. She sucks in a breath.

She flattens herself further against the corner, the cold of the wall pushing through the damp lab coat. She can feel her hair sliding against her skin under her clothes, abrasive. Not everyone has this much hair, so why does she?

_You literally never had a haircut in your entire life._

Her entire life has been about fifteen minutes.

The door caves inwards before Peter can respond, crumpling like paper, and twisting in the centre as some hidden force grips it and pushes it apart at the seam before stepping through gap.

The warped metal snaps back together behind him, but the marks his fingers left are still there.

_That’s the Winter Soldier._

She knows that.

_James Buchanan Barnes._

She knew that too.

_Good ol’ Bucky Barnes._

Yes.

_Captain America’s childhood best friend, now with a thousand times more murderous intent-_

Will you stop!?

Bucky Barnes, calling him that will make him less scary, she is sure. Probably. She’s not sure at all. Bucky is moving quickly and methodically, checking each door before entering. He spends longer in some than other.

She can hear an occasional quiet noise through the wall, when he enters. The soft sound of a muffled gunshot, even though wall is something she knows.

Every time he enters, she moves, ignoring the screaming in her skull to travel down the corridor to that shiny panel of glass. Freedom is on the other side, or a least less confinement.

_One._

She inches forward, keeping to the shadowy spots well above his sight line.

_Two._

Bucky’s in another room, this one takes a longer time, and there are three soft popping sounds in this one, then louder sound of someone speaking in a strained, stretched voice before Bucky shoots them softly and the thud of their body as it drops when whatever soul they had leaves it.

_Three._

He’s out and in the next door, and she has to move past this door carefully. It’s open and all it would take is Bucky deciding to glance back over his shoulder. Then…

What would happen then?

Nothing good, and if she was lucky, she would die quickly, meet her end with the gentle sound of Bucky’s silencer ringing in her ears still. She has not been lucky in all twenty or so minutes of life she’s had so far.

She’s past the door.

_Green light._

She punches through the glass, feet first. The shards catch on the clothes, dragging through her bare skin in places, but the air outside is crisp. She folds herself through the air, this is something she knows.

Peter thought her this.

Peter showed her this a thousand times.

She rolls as she hits the ground, before she gets to her feet and runs.

She’s outside, away from Hydra, and in considerably less confinement that before.

_You need a different name._

Why?

_You can’t - you can’t be Peter outside. You look like a girl._

Of course she can’t be Peter. You’re Peter.

_Oh. You’re doing it again._

And I am a girl. Probably.

_No, I just, thought you thought -_

You trick me sometimes, but I know when I’m me and you’re you and when and when you’re me and I’m you and even when I’m us and you’re we. Mostly.

_What about May?_

No. You’re changing the subject.

_Yeah, but only back to the original topic. Gwen?_

No.

_Mary Jane?_

Stop that. I don’t want to be named after someone whose even less real than you.

_I’m real! I think, therefore I am._

I don’t care. I need a name that’s like yours.

_What do you mean like mine?_

Peter Benjamin Parker.

_That clarifies nothing._

Can I have some?

_Of what? My name?_

Yeah. Just the parts you aren’t using.

_No!_

When was the last time you used Parker?

_Uh… duh… Recently._

Stop being selfish. You have three names! I’m only asking for one.

_Fine, fine, you can have Parker._

And what about Benjamin? Can we split it?

_I’m keeping Ben. And don’t push your luck._

Peter Ben and Parker Jamin. Parker liked the idea of that.

_You can’t do that either._

Why not? Parker doesn’t like I. And you won’t let me be she.

_You sound like Elmo._

**Author's Note:**

> I really, really can't explain this. If you have questons you can certainly ask them, but do I know the answer? Probably not. But please do let me know if you liked it, or if you didn't. That's okay too. 
> 
> It's only going to crush my creative spirit for a little while.


End file.
